The installation of FreeCAD on the most well-known Linux systems has been now endorsed by the community, and FreeCAD should be directly available via the package manager available on your distribution. The FreeCAD team also provides a couple of "official" packages when new releases are made, and a couple of experimental PPA repositories for testing bleeding-edge features.

Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based systems

Many Linux distributions are based on Ubuntu and share its repositories. Besides official variants (Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu), there are non official distros such as Linux Mint, Voyager and others. The installation options below should be compatible to these systems.

Official Ubuntu repository

FreeCAD is available from Ubuntu repositories and can be installed via the Software Center or with this command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install freecad

Important Note:Chances are this stable version will be outdated, and not have the latest features. To get the last release version, please use the Personal Package Archive (PPA) options below.

Stable PPA with GUI

To install FreeCAD using the PPA, from the graphical interface, please follow those instructions. The FreeCAD community provides a PPA repository on Launchpad with the latest stable FreeCAD version.

You need to add to your system's Software Sources the following PPA. To do that navigate to Ubuntu Software Centre → Edit → Software Sources → Other Software. Click on add and copy and past the code below:

ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable

Refresh your software sources, if asked. Now, you can find and install the last stable FreeCAD version on the Ubuntu Software Center.

Upgrade downloads and installs the newest packages version of the installed programs. It will be applied to all the softwares installed on your computer.

Execute this command to open the stable version of FreeCAD:

freecad

Daily PPA with console

If you want to install the last unstable version of FreeCAD, please use the PPA named "freecad-daily"PPA repository on Launchpad. This way you can access the bleeding edge of FreeCAD development. This PPA is automatically compiled daily from the official FreeCAD's master branch repository. It will usually contain numerous bug fixes and feature updates.

Debian and other debian-based systems

Since Debian Lenny, FreeCAD is available directly from the Debian software repositories and can be installed via synaptic or simply with:

sudo apt-get install freecad

OpenSUSE

FreeCAD is typically installed with:

zypper install FreeCAD

Gentoo

FreeCAD can be built/installed simply by issuing:

emerge freecad

Fedora

FreeCAD has been included in the official Fedora packages since Fedora 20. It can be installed from the command line with:

sudo dnf install freecad

On older Fedora releases, that was:

sudo yum install freecad

The gui packages managers can also be used. Search for "freecad".

The official release package version tends to be well behind the FreeCAD releases. Package: freecad shows the versions included in the Fedora repositories over time and versions.

More current versions can be obtained by downloading one of the .AppImage releases from the github repository. These work fine on Fedora.

If you want to keep up with the absolute latest daily builds, FreeCAD is also available on copr. To install the build from there, in a terminal session, enter:

sudo dnf copr enable @freecad/nightly
sudo dnf install freecad

That leaves the copr repository active, so

sudo dnf upgrade

or equivalent, will update to the latest FreeCAD build, along with updates from any of the other active repos. If you want something a bit more stable, you can disable @freecad/nightly again after the initial install. The copr repository only keeps builds from the past 2 weeks. This is not a solution if you want to pick a specific older version.

Instructions are also available on compile FreeCAD yourself, including a script specifically for Fedora. With a minor change, to checkout the specific commit from git, any version since about FreeCAD 0.15 can be built on any distribution since Fedora 21.

Arch

Installing FreeCAD on Arch Linux and derivatives (ex. Manjaro):

pacman -S freecad

Other

If you find out that your system features FreeCAD but is not documented in this page, please tell us on the forum!

Many alternative, non-official FreeCAD packages are available on the net, for example for systems like slackware or fedora. A search on the net can quickly give you some results.

Manual install on .deb based systems

If for some reason you cannot use one of the above methods, you can always download one of the .deb packages available on the Download page. Ubuntu32/64bitAppImage64bit

Once you downloaded the .deb corresponding to your system version, if you have the Gdebi package installed (usually it is), you just need to navigate to where you downloaded the file, and double-click on it. The necessary dependencies will be taken care of automatically by your system package manager.
Alternatively you can also install it from the terminal, navigating to where you downloaded the file, and type:

sudo dpkg -i Name_of_your_FreeCAD_package.deb

changing Name_of_your_FreeCAD_package.deb by the name of the file you downloaded.

After you installed FreeCAD, a startup icon will be added in the "Graphic" section of your Start Menu.

Installing on other Linux/Unix systems

Many common Linux distros now include a precompiled FreeCAD as part of the standard packages. This is often out of date, but is a place to start. Check the standard package managers for your system. One of the following (partial) list of commands could install the official version of FreeCAD for your distro from the terminal. These probably need administrator privileges.

The package name is case sensitive, so try `FreeCAD` as well as `freecad`. If that does not work for you, either because your package manager does not have a precompiled FreeCAD version available, or because the available version is too old for your needs, you can try downloading one of the .AppImage releases from the github repository. These tend to work on most 64 bit Linux distributions, without any special installation. Just make sure the downloaded file is marked as executable, then run it.

If that still is not good enough, and you can not locate another source of a precompiled package for your situation, you will need to compile FreeCAD yourself.